Since Jonathan Kent’s 2006 production we have all had reason to talk aloud about the haunting power of abusers.

Francesca Gilpin’s unequivocal revival has gained a profoundly unsettling resonance.

The ceremony of innocence is all there in the nursery paraphernalia - doll’s house, train-set etc – making its lonely way around on a revolve which also delivers the children in their beds – alongside the ghosts – with a quiet, sinister trundling.

Where a libretto makes much of such gothic staples as the footstep at the door, to have the creeping movement of the set incorporated into the interpretation of the score is a chillingly brilliant touch.

Paul Brown’s design perfectly expresses Britten’s ideas and pushes them further, most notably in the window that dominates the stage tilting in an eerie ballet, playing with the divide between the real and the unreal, what is spoken and what is secret, but suggested.

Given that the story so fails the children, it seems only fair to praise the performances of the two that play them.

Louise Moseley is a wonderfully feisty Flora and Thomas Delgardo-Little hinges deftly between assailable innocence and unsettling precociousness. As it should, the show stops for a moment as he sings Malo, for this is the opera’s glassy little heart, and it is breaking.